Role of Women in Sports

Throughout human history, the role of women in sports has reflected the changing status of women in society. In ancient Greece, for example, women were not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games which took place once every four years. In fact, if women were caught even watching the Games, they could be "tortured and punished with death, as this was an age when life was cheap and the rule of men was total" ("Then and Now" 55). Despite such persecution, there was for a time a women's version of the Olympics called the "Heraea," after the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus (55). In the second century B.C., Roman forces conquered Greece, and women were again barred from participating in public sports events. Women were eventually restored in Roman sporting events; however, the historic evidence indicates "that women's athletics in the Roman period had more to do with public entertainment than with sport proper" (Harris 41). Thus, even when they were allowed to participate in sports, the women of the Roman period were still not taken very seriously in their efforts. This state of affairs has continued to exist down through the ages. In fact, it has only been since the early 1970's that women have been truly accepted in competitive spectator sports.

In the early 19th century, for example, both the United States and Europe were under the influence of the Victorian attitudes of the time. Victorianism maintained a rigid outlook on life in which the role of women in society wa

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joyment of the spectator, the athletic reputation, or the commercial advantage of any school or other organization" (168). In this way, a clear public statement was made that professional spectator sports were the domain of men, who were alone physically capable of handling the hardships of the task. Despite such opposition, women continued to make slow but sure progress in sports throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1890's, for example, many college women formed basketball teams despite the shock of the public at seeing women playing what had formerly been exclusively a male sport. In the early 1930's, softball became fashionable, with women as well as men being permitted to form teams. This acceptance of women in softball led to an interesting development in the 1940's, when America was engaged in the Second World War. In 1943, Philip K. Wrigley, owner of both the Wrigley chewing-gum company and tke Chicago Cubs, decided to form the first and only all-female professional baseball league in American history, the "All-American Girl's Baseball League" (Fincher 91). In one sense, this development in American sport reflected the changes which had taken place in society as a result of the war, w

Category: History - R